Coronavirus: Why was there no daily briefing today?

‘At least we didn’t get any lies today,’ says one disappointed viewer

The disappearance of the government’s coronavirus briefings this weekend has met with anger, scorn and confusion from the public.

Downing Street announced earlier this week that it had scrapped the press conferences on Saturdays and Sundays because of poor TV viewing figures.

As a result there was no briefing on 6 June, leaving many social media users bereft.

“Was wondering what happened to the daily briefing,” said Christopher Torrens. “Apparently coronavirus does not work at weekends. No briefing. No leadership.”

John Shepherd wrote: “At least we didn’t get any lies today.”

Instead of the daily briefing, which usually take place between 4pm and 6pm, BBC One showed an episode of Escape to the Country while ITV treated its viewers to the original US version of Masked Singer.

The decision to end the weekend briefings came after ministers were blasted by the UK’s statistics watchdog for “misleading” use of figures on Cover-19 testing.

Boris Johnson led the first press conference back on 16 March and appeared regularly before announcing the beginning of the lockdown on 23 March.

He faded from view after testing positive for Covid-19 on 27 March and was later admitted to intensive care.

Following his discharge he spent several weeks recuperating at Chequers while a succession of ministers including health secretary Matt Hancock took questions from the media and members of the public.

The prime minister reappeared on 27 April but made few appearances before 24 May, when he defended his chief aide Dominic Cummings following reports of a lockdown-busting trip to Durham and Barnard Castle while Mr Johnson was ill.

Earlier this week No10 said that Boris Johnson will commit to appearing once a week in the new five-a-week schedule of press conferences.